Ukraine Wants A Zelenskyy-putin Summit To Jolt Stalled Us-led Peace Efforts

Ukraine is pushing for face-to-face talks betwixt President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kyiv’s apical diplomat said, presenting a imaginable acme arsenic a measurement of injecting caller momentum into U.S.-led efforts to extremity Russia’s much than four-year penetration of its neighbor.

Meanwhile, a Ukrainian drone onslaught heavy wrong Russia struck a residential building, sidesplitting a female and a child, Russian officials said Wednesday.

Kyiv has asked Turkey to thief facilitate top-level talks and has reached retired to different capitals arsenic imaginable hosts, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said, adding that Ukraine would see immoderate venue extracurricular Russia and Belarus.

“We are … advocating for a (summit) gathering now to bring caller momentum to diplomacy,” Sybiha told reporters connected Tuesday. His remarks were embargoed until Wednesday.

U.S.-mediated talks complete nan past twelvemonth betwixt delegations from Moscow and Kyiv person made small aliases nary headway connected cardinal issues, specified arsenic nan early of 4 Ukrainian regions Moscow is trying to seizure but doesn’t afloat control. With Washington’s attraction now gripped by nan Iran war, nan talks are connected ice.

Zelenskyy has accepted an unconditional ceasefire demanded by U.S. President Donald Trump but Putin has refused. Putin thinks that clip is connected his side, that Western subject and financial support will slice and that Ukraine’s guidance will yet collapse, analysts say.

Meanwhile, a grim warfare of attrition continues on nan astir 1,250-kilometer (800-mile) beforehand statement that snakes on eastbound and confederate areas of Ukraine. Western officials and analysts declare Russia is suffering respective tens of thousands of battlefield casualties each month, drafting comparisons to nan carnage of World War I.

Independent verification of battlefield casualties and which broadside has nan precocious manus is not possible.

Ukraine has developed a home arms manufacture which is progressively producing long-range drones and missiles tin of striking heavy wrong Russia. It has taken purpose astatine Russia’s lipid accumulation and manufacturing plants that proviso nan Russian military.

In Syzran, a metropolis successful Russia’s Samara region that is astir 800 kilometers (500 miles) eastbound of nan separator pinch Ukraine, a drone onslaught caused nan illness of a conception of a residential building, section authorities said.

The bodies of a female and a kid were pulled retired from nether nan rubble and 12 others were injured, section officials said.

Images from nan segment showed a portion of a four-story building reduced to a monolithic heap of rubble, pinch emergency workers connected apical of it.

Russian media reports said a Rosneft lipid refinery — a predominant target of Ukrainian drone attacks — is located connected nan aforesaid thoroughfare arsenic nan damaged building.

Ukraine’s aerial attacks connected Russia accrued by astir 4 times past year, from 6,200 successful 2024 to much than 23,000 successful 2025, Sergei Shoigu, nan caput of Russia’s Security Council, said past month.

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Follow AP’s sum of nan warfare successful Ukraine astatine https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine